A federal appeals court on Tuesday revived part of the widely-watched obesity suit against McDonald’s Corp. that accuses the world’s biggest fast-food company of using misleading advertising to lure children into eating fattening, unhealthy foods. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a trial judge wrongfully threw out certain portions of the complaint […]

San Francisco-based Pillsbury Winthrop and Washington DC’s Shaw Pittman have entered merger discussions, which – if successful – would gatecrash the top 20 US firms. Shaw Pittman has been hit by a number of partner departures in the US and in London and is specifically looking to increase its size in New York. The Big

The commander of three British servicemen accused of mistreating Iraqi detainees testified Friday that he told soldiers to make their prisoners “work hard” picking up garbage but saw no abuse. A Danish army captain and four military police sergeants, meanwhile, were formally charged with mistreating Iraqi detainees at a military camp near Basra last year.

The trial of Bernard Ebbers, the Canadian-born former chief executive of WorldCom Inc., got underway Tuesday in New York. Ebbers, 63, has pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud and conspiracy connected with the company’s $11 billion US accounting scandal. He faces up to 85 years in prison if convicted on the charges. “Bernie Ebbers

Iran’s hardline judiciary admitted it had made an administrative error by summoning Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi to a national security court, and said there was no danger she would be arrested. “The prosecutor reviewed the case when he learned it concerned Ebadi, and found some mistakes had been made,” judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimi-Rad

This week, separate trials are scheduled to begin for two of the more prominent names on the government’s list of pinstriped bad boys: Bernard Ebbers, former head of WorldCom, and Dennis Kozlowski, former CEO of Tyco International. Except for the upcoming trial of former Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling, most of the marquee

Whatever reasons Walt Disney thought they had to fire Michael Ovitz, they were not good enough to send him away without $140m in severance, the Delaware chancery court heard on Friday. John Fox, an employment lawyer from California, said none of the former group president’s failings during his brief stint at Disney in the mid-1990s

The U.S. military prison guard convicted of abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib said on Saturday he complained repeatedly to superiors about the rough treatment he was forced to mete out to prisoners. Charles Graner, who was found guilty on Friday on 10 charges in the scandal that has badly damaged America’s reputation, said during

Who says class distinctions are dead? This year’s Who’s Who welcomed 135 lawyers to its pages, 115 of whom were silks and just three of whom were solicitors in private practice. In this year’s The Lawyer Hot 100, we’ve tried to be a bit more representative. Of course, we’re slightly hampered by our raw material.

News this week that Peter Cornell, global managing partner of the world’s largest law firm, Clifford Chance, is relocating from London to New York – the two main international legal centres – has shone the spotlight on whether British and American lawyers can merge successfully. They dominate the market. Four of the world’s 10 largest